XI

 

 

The Village of Gisburne

June, 1171

 

GUY WAS LYING awake when he heard his father return. They were the sounds he had been anticipating for over a week: the pounding of hooves from outside, felt as much as heard; the clank of the latch as the front door was opened, its dry hinges whining; the thump and clatter of chattels being dumped upon flagstones. It was done with care, so as not to disturb the slumbering inhabitants – but in the still of the night, every sound seemed loud.

Guy’s heart leapt – but he did not move. Instead, he would wait for what he hoped – no, what he knew – was coming. He heard the slow, careful tread of heavy-booted feet approaching his door, a weary sigh and a familiar, stifled cough. Gripping the blankets in his small fists, he kicked his feet beneath the covers and gave a silent laugh of pure joy.

Every one of the thirty nights his father had been away, he had yearned to hear these sounds. Every night for the past eight, he had forced himself to stay awake in expectation of them, not wishing to miss the moment – but on every occasion, sleep had won the battle. He had drifted off into vivid and exhausting dreams of long journeys, in which familiar places suddenly seemed alien and indistinct and he was always getting further and further from home.

Tonight had been no different. The exception had been the dream. In it, he had been at home. It was winter again – something he’d known, rather than seen or felt – and somehow, beyond the ceiling above him, he could see that the dark sky was filled with thousands upon thousands of impossibly bright stars. He marvelled at it. Then, somewhere, there was a tapping – the sound of bony knuckles on wood, steady and deliberate. It came from the wooden shutter at his window. He knew right away that it was Adela.

“Um-brey...” she chanted in her reedy, little-girl voice. She wanted to come in out of the cold. Guy knew that too. She must be frozen, poor little mouse. That was what his mother used to say to her – “poor little mouse”. But he felt too afraid to open the window. “Um-brey...” came the sing-song call again. Tap, tap, tap went the knuckles against the shutter.

Then he heard her begin to sob – a plaintive, hollow cry he had not heard in a long time – and saw his hand go to the latch.

The shutter was no longer there. Framed within the black space of the window, against a sky that seemed to stretch forever into darkness, was the face of Adela. It seemed to glow like the moon, its light pale and cold, her eyes huge and darkly circled. “Please let me in, Umbrey,” she said, and sobbed again.

Guy felt a shuddering horror. Various details inspired it: that she looked so sad. That the window was – he now remembered – twelve feet above the ground. That she was dead.

The face drifted towards him. He was unable to move. You died... He wasn’t sure if he spoke it or merely thought it. How can you be here? The question stirred memories, brought realisations. Adela could not be here. And this was not how his room was meant to be. It was like it was years ago, with the small rickety bed from which his foot once suffered an enormous splinter – so big his father had simply been able to pull it out with thumb and forefinger. His mother had insisted upon a new one then, and they had burned it on the fire that October. As these realisations came, challenging the seeming-reality of the dream, the world had begun to unravel. Its grip on him dissolved. Its images faded. Finally, he had jolted awake – with a deep sense of relief. All around was back just as it was meant to be – the shutter open, the warm night air wafting through, heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, the near-full moon almost perfectly framed at the window’s centre. All still. All real. He had lain there for only a few minutes when he had heard his father’s horse approach – and the dream was utterly forgotten.

 

 

THE LATCH ON the door of the small room – the only such room in the house – clicked. The door was opened with slow, quiet deliberation. A familiar face loomed in the gap.

Guy laughed aloud.

“What are you doing still awake?” whispered his father in quiet outrage. Then his face broke into a smile, and he sat on Guy’s bed and ruffled the boy’s hair. He smelt of horses and leather and sweat. There was something sweet and reassuring in that smell.

“I missed you,” said his father. For an instant, there was such feeling in his voice and face that Guy thought the man he had always regarded as implacable was about to weep. The possibility frightened him. In another moment, it was gone, and his father was laughing again.

“You’re back!” Guy said, beaming. Statement of the obvious did not, somehow, seem out of place tonight. He fought the urge to hug his father, however; he thought himself too old for that sort of thing. He wasn’t sure if he saw disappointment flicker across his father’s face.

“Did you look after everyone for me?” said his father. It was an odd choice of phrase. There was only mother now, unless one counted the horses and the few servants.

“Sol and Luna missed Estoil,” he said. Then added, earnestly: “I combed and cleaned them out every day. And took them to the paddock.”

His father frowned at him and leaned forward. “You didn’t try to ride Sol, did you?”

Guy shook his head vigorously and felt his face redden. That was a lie. The command not to do so had been the last thing his father had said when he left, and yet Guy had made the attempt the very next day, climbing on the gate in the paddock to get himself onto the back of the big destrier. Sol had waited until he was sitting comfortably, then immediately bucked him off, as his father had clearly known he would. Now, Guy just hoped that in the pale light his guilt was not too obvious. As he flushed, he felt his chin itch.

His father grinned, and nodded – either because he believed his son, or was too glad to be home to invite argument. Guy suspected the latter. Then suddenly his father looked closer at him. “What’s that?” he said, and raised the boy’s chin gently with a rough finger to reveal the vertical red mark there.

Guy had forgotten about the scar. It seemed an age ago it had happened, though was barely more than four weeks.

“I fell against the stone trough in the paddock,” said Guy, sheepishly. He chose not to mention that this was when Sol had thrown him, and that he was probably lucky to be alive.

His father frowned, and looked at his face on both sides. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Guy said; then, looking defiant, added: “I didn’t cry.”

His father laughed and ruffle his hair. “Brave boy,” he said.

“There are wasps up there,” said Guy, changing the subject. “Building a nest in the Tall Tree.”

“You leave them be,” said his father, wagging a finger. “No good comes of messing with those poisonous little bastards.”

Guy laughed at that. His father’s momentarily stern expression dropped and he chuckled, too.

“Where did you go?” said Guy. He had missed his father too, but now he was more concerned with hearing tales of adventure.

“Your mother didn’t tell you?”

“No,” said Guy. He expected his father to be annoyed at the answer, but for some reason he simply looked relieved. “She just said it was over the sea.”

“That it was,” said his father, and sighed deeply.

“What were you doing there?” asked Guy.

His father looked him in the eye in silence, his mouth half open as if he had been about to speak but had suddenly been unable to find the words. He looked absent. Lost. It seemed to Guy his father was suddenly burdened, as if he had recently looked upon something terrible. He could not say quite what it was he saw in his face. But in the pale light of the moon, those features – of this man who had always seemed all-powerful – seemed somehow to have aged, to have gone beyond age, to become something else altogether. A thing without substance. A pale ghost.

 

 

WHAT WERE YOU doing there? The words rattled round and round in Robert of Gisburne’s head, taunting and accusing him. He was exhausted, his body aching and sore and clammy, his clothes stuck to him. The miles, and the days, weighed upon him. He just wanted to sleep and forget, and tomorrow treat the past month as a dream from which he had now awoken. But he knew it would not be that simple. His relief at being home was overwhelming. It felt like deliverance. But something about it terrified him, too.

“It was something for King Henry,” he said, finally, and forced a smile. “Something secret. So, you mustn’t tell anyone.” He leaned in towards his son, his good humour now fully returned. “You swear?”

Guy nodded earnestly, his eyes wide with wonder. “I swear.”

Robert had been worried about the boy of late. For the past year he had been running wild, getting into all manner of scrapes and ignoring his parents’ commands. No, it had been longer than that. Since little Adela had died of the red fever, in fact – and Robert felt sure it was in some way connected. Brother and sister had always had a close bond. When it had struck – randomly, out of nowhere, a meaningless tragedy – young Guy had reacted not with grief, but with anger. He had wished to blame someone – to call them out and fight them. Finding he could not, he declared that he hated God, then fought with a boy from the village whose family were respected for their piety. He would have damn near killed him if the blacksmith’s lad had not pulled them apart.

Robert had meted out punishment as seemed fitting, but in truth had felt ill-equipped to deal with it. His wife Ælfwyn had met the boy’s sudden, uncharacteristic aggression with tearful perplexity. They had never been the most devout of couples, but after Adela her relationship with God became all the keener. She began praying for the boy, and, assuming her husband shared her bemusement, urged him to do so, too. He did nothing to contradict her assumption. The real problem was not that Robert failed to understand his son’s feelings, but that he felt exactly the same.

“What’s that?” said Guy, squinting in the dark.

Robert saw his son’s eye caught by something at his side. He immediately knew what. A glint of polished metal – the silver of a pommel atop a black grip.

“A new sword,” said Robert. “Given to me by the King himself.”

The boy leaned further forward, his hand outstretched. “Can I...?”

“Tomorrow!” insisted his father. “I need to stable Estoil. He needs his sleep. And you need yours.” He stood to leave.

“A story, then!” called Guy. “Before you go. From your travels.” Robert stopped. His guts tightened. Somehow he managed a good-natured smile. Recounting what had happened was the very last thing he wanted – this night or any other.

“I told you,” he said, “it was secret. By order of the King.”

“I mean a ghost story!” said Guy. “I haven’t heard any for weeks. Mother won’t tell me them. You said you’d listen out for new ones.”

Robert slumped back down on the bed. “You and your ghost stories,” he laughed. “How tales of spooks and ghouls are supposed to help you sleep I can’t imagine...”

“Please!” begged Guy.

His father screwed up his face in thought, as if digging deep into his memory. “Well, there was one,” he said. “Told me by a pilgrim. But I’m not sure you’re ready for it yet...” His father made as if to leave again.

“I am!” said Guy in desperation. “Please...”

His father narrowed his eyes, nodded, and turned back.

“I’ll be in trouble with your mother if it gives you nightmares.”

“It won’t, I promise.”

“Well then...” Robert said, nodding slowly. And, in hushed tones, he found himself relating the following story.

 

 

THERE WAS ONCE a man named Richard, who went on a pilgrimage. His wife was with child at the time, but Richard’s determination to serve his God was such that earthly considerations took second place. And so he said his goodbyes and left her behind in England.

The journey was hard, with many hazards along the way, in the wild mountains most of all. There were thieving bandits, wolves, wild dogs. Every night, one of the pilgrims in Richard’s party would keep watch over the others. This particular night, it was Richard’s turn to stay awake and warn them of danger.

It was a still night – strangely quiet – and he was almost dozing off when a great clamour jarred him awake. He peered about in alarm, but when he looked about, the deafening tumult had awoken none of his fellows. They lay as if dead in their slumber. Then he looked upon the pilgrim road, and saw, advancing along it, a ghostly procession. Wraiths and phantoms of the dead, blowing tunelessly upon trumpets and banging upon drums – wasted in their flesh, their withered faces drawn into expressions of terrible melancholy. Each one rode upon the back of a beast – not just horses, but sheep, pigs, oxen... the very animals that had been used to pay for each of their funerals. He watched in dumb horror as the ghastly sight swayed past. Then he saw the strangest sight of all. Behind the parade of dead riders was some living thing, rolling along the dusty ground in a leather boot. The pilgrim thought at first it was a skinned hare. Then, to his horror, he realised it was a baby – too tiny to be alive.

“Who are you,” he asked, “and why do you roll?”

Peering from its black shroud, the child replied in a thin and dreadful voice. “It is not right that you address me. For I am your child, stillborn and buried without a name.”

Struck through with sorrow and remorse, the pilgrim wrapped the creature in his shirt, baptised it and gave it a name. And it gave a great cry of joy, and walked upright into paradise.

The pilgrim kept the old boot. Upon returning home, he asked his wife to bring his boots to him, but she could find only one. To her astonishment, the man then produced the other, and told his tale – whereupon the midwife who had attended her confessed that she had buried the dead child in the boot, unnamed and unbaptised.

 

 

THAT STILLBORN CHILD – its face, its voice – haunted Gisburne for months afterwards. It still figured in his nightmares from time to time. But it wasn’t just the tale that had affected him so. It was the look on his father’s face as he had concluded it – an expression of unutterable sorrow.

For a while after, in his sleep, his father repeatedly muttered a strange word that Guy did not recognise. He thrashed in agitation as he did so, as if recalling some torment. More than once Guy went to him, but neither he nor his mother had ever dared to wake him up. It had passed. Then, when he had nursed the old man on his deathbed, the habit had momentarily returned, and the buried memory was unearthed.

Years later, Gisburne discovered that the word was a name, and that it was Irish.